


Aurora

by heytheremisterblue



Category: Half-Life
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Epistle 3, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Mutual Pining, Written Before Half-Life: Alyx
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2020-05-16 19:44:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19324843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heytheremisterblue/pseuds/heytheremisterblue
Summary: Mere days after the death of Eli Vance, his grieving daughter leads the Lambda Resistance into the heart of Combine operations. The Borealis lingers in the gaps between reality, waiting. If they want to finish what Eli started, they're going to have to risk their lives, and perhaps face a fate worse than death.





	1. Arctic Circle

If not for the deafening chopping noise of helicopter blades, the heavy, cold air around them would’ve been dead silent. There was nothing to say. Even if Gordon could speak—and by God he wanted to now, to say anything, just a single apology or condolence—words would have escaped him anyway. She was laser-focused on the piloting of this copter through what had started as light snow and progressed into a much thicker fall, trespassing dangerously close to blizzard territory. The bone-chilling winds seemed appropriate to the way both of them felt. 

It had been one singular day since Eli Vance had been murdered by Combine right before their eyes. The smoking gun was an Advisor, no less, which landed them in an extremely difficult situation: _they_ now had everything. Everything of the Resistance; Eli’s knowledge of each canal and tunnel through which they would bring evacuees, every bit of every equation used to make the teleports work, _everything_ down to the last detail. That’s what Advisors did to you. They’d freeze you in midair and strip you of your dignity before revealing their great long tongues with which they pierced your spine and extracted your brain, and with it, what makes you, you. This happened to Eli while his daughter was forced to watch. Now, she was flying a helicopter into an arctic storm, with only coordinates from someone she hardly trusted to guide her. Gordon did what he did best in these times and sat next to her in silence, kicking himself for it. 

Five days. That’s how long they had known each other by now. Five. A business week. In these five days he had explored more with her than he could manage to in five months with a friend in his past life. The first time he ever met her she saved him from being beaten senseless by civil protection officers when he barely had a clue of where he was. There was a near immediate sense of trust there, as if a part of him knew what was going to happen in the future and was ready to dive in. And a substantial amount certainly happened; Dr. Vance was taken the moment they were reunited after Gordon’s absence, a thing which he still did not quite understand, and sent first to one of the most horrific establishments that still roamed on the earth, then to _the_ most horrific, the Citadel. Nova Prospekt paled in comparison to the sterile darkness of that terrible skyscraper which held the creatures unfortunate enough to be captured and mutated by the Combine. That building no longer existed, sacrificed along with all of the cybernetically-modified species inside. He supposed they were put out of their misery.

Together these two heroes—if he could be called a hero, which he doubted—had killed Dr. Breen and managed to usher dozens of rebels and innocent citizens to safety. No one had yet heard from Barney, and his stomach felt uneasy as he wondered of his fate. He hoped they had been long out of the city by the time the first portal storm had hit and wiped out the bridge from which Alyx and Gordon derailed. He could hardly bear imagining the scene of a horrible train accident, hundreds dead, including his old friend, and he physically shook his head to rattle the thought out of it. Instead his mind drifted to the antlion mines, where the woman next to him once lay unconscious, dying. It pulled his stomach further into upset. For whatever reason in this white wilderness over which they flew, he could only nurse thoughts that discomforted him. Perhaps it was a fear of the unknown beast they drifted towards now. He had never seen this much snow in his life, even in Boston. The HEV suit kept his core warm, though his nose and ears were red with complaint at the whipping chill coming through the sides of the chopper. Alyx, in her usual garb, though now with the sleeves of her sweatshirt rolled down to her wrists, visibly shivered.

If he got up now and tried to unfasten and retrieve one of the parkas from the back of the helicopter, he would most definitely fail to make it back to his seat. His vocal chords still failed him, so he was unable to ask her if she would like to land somewhere to gear up. Instead, all he could do was sit next to her and watch her tremble, her face and fingers growing pinker by the moment. He was about to reach out and touch her arm in concern when an alarm blared from within the cockpit. Alyx let out an irritated _What the hell?_ and their eyes both turned to the radar, which showed another vehicle behind them in the sky.

“Combine! They followed—”

She only made it halfway through her sentence before they heard an explosion, and then the helicopter rocked tremendously under impact. The tail of the chopper had been completely blown apart by a rocket from the Combine aircraft. They were about to go down, hard.

“Brace yourself!” she shouted as she pulled up on the controls, sending them turning desperately through the air. Gordon did exactly as he was told and used his hands above his head to wedge himself against the ceiling of the cockpit, about all he could do. His gut turned with every spin as they cascaded downward. His only hope was that the snow would make for a soft landing.

Both of them grunted as the chassis came tumbling to the ground and lodged itself in about a foot of snow. The frozen dirt made for a harsh impact on their bones, but the snow saved them. However, poor Gordon, despite his efforts to keep himself as still as possible during their descent, had a hard collision with the controls that left his nose sore and bleeding from the nostril. It didn’t feel broken, but it sure as hell felt bad.

“Oh, God,” remarked Alyx, panicking to unbuckle herself from the pilot’s seat. “Are you okay?”

He tenderly wiped the blood off his nose and peered down at his stained glove before looking up at her and giving a less than enthusiastic thumbs-up. Okay? Yes. Having fun? The jury’s still out on that one.

The craft that had taken them out of the sky seemed to be satisfied with its work and turned a 90-degree angle away from the scene of their crash. Its actions seemed to say, _we don’t need to waste ammo on killing you when there’s the cold to do it for us._ Alyx rushed out of the cockpit and he quickly followed her. “We need to get the supplies we can carry and make a break for it. This thing could still explode.”

Without missing a beat, she hopped into the back and started pulling out crates of first-aid kits, healing vials, weapons, ammunition, spare clothing, packaged military meals, the works. God, those MREs were probably thirty years old by now, he begged whatever force was out there that he wouldn’t have to dare open one. She took his crowbar, latched in safely along with all of their other tools and weapons, and began to pry open the crates one by one, stuffing as much as she could into the two big camping packs she had put onboard in case of exactly this. She shivered audibly now, her hot breath crystalizing the moment it escaped her blueing lips. Gordon immediately hopped into the back of the helicopter and retrieved a parka which he quickly forced around her shoulders. She seemed taken aback by the action and her eyes darted to his as she hesitantly wormed her arms into the sleeves. “Th-thanks, Gordon,” she managed with a quick smile.

After putting an extra pair of thin gloves under those of the HEV suit to warm his numbing fingers and securing a stocking cap on his head, complete with a stenciled lambda, he awkwardly slung his own parka over his armor along with his respective backpack. Alyx zipped up her navy blue coat and threw the hood over her head, buckled the pack strap over her chest, and nodded at him. “Let’s go.”

So they went. Luckily they still knew which way they were supposed to be headed, and they both silently hoped there would be some kind of outpost or abandoned radio station from which they could contact Judith to get more specific directions to… wherever she was. She found it, the Borealis. That was the reason she had gone to work under Dr. Breen, seemingly abandoning the Resistance—she wasn’t double-crossing them, she was infiltrating the Combine to find the liner and all of the information they had on it. Dr. Mossman was an incredibly brave soul, Gordon thought as they trudged north. To put herself in such a dangerous position to gain intelligence, to make herself look like a traitor in an effort to get close to Breen, it was genius and terrifying. She was a much smarter person than she was given credit for being. He hoped that, even after Eli’s death, Alyx’s animosity for the pseudo-stepmother character in her life would continue to wane.

Gordon could not zip his parka all the way up over the chestplate of his suit, though he didn’t terribly mind, as his head and hands were now as toasty as they could get in these conditions under their fleece. Alyx, on the other hand, still looked extremely cold; her jeans looked wet from the snow melting against her warm skin, probably refreezing directly onto her knees and turning them painful and red under the denim. Even as someone who grew up in the kind of weather that turned all your extremities bright pink and sent you running inside after a few short minutes of winter fun, she seemed to be direly _not_ enjoying herself right now. She remained strong, however, marching along with tall and wide steps through the dozen inches of snow on the ground, keeping her pace intact with his longer strides. He was incredibly grateful at this point to remember that, because it was the summer, the sun wouldn’t set all of the way in the Arctic Circle; instead it would sort of bounce along the horizon, pretending to sink under and then ping-ponging right back up into the sky again. It was around four in the afternoon right now—they had set off around midmorning—so they had enough time to spare, depending on whether or not they decided to freeze to death anyway.

 _Do you want my jacket?_ he really wanted to ask. _I don’t really need it._ Instead, he stopped to take off the backpack and then the parka, holding it out to offer it to her.

“No, I’m fine. Thanks,” she replied, looking at him a bit odd. Unconvinced, he put it back on and carried on walking. She looked so terribly cold, it was beginning to really worry him. What were the signs of hypothermia again? Slurred speech, suddenly stopping shivering, getting drowsy… but if you had any of those, it was basically too late for you. Oh God, now he was really terrified. They had to find something, anything, to get away from the cold, and they had to do it as soon as humanly possible.

They both hunched in on themselves with arms crossed around their chests as the wind really picked up and smashed against them. It burned his exposed skin and he couldn’t possibly imagine how bad it had to be for Alyx. He flipped his hood up over his head and pulled the strings taught, remarking to himself that he probably looked utterly ridiculous even though he certainly didn’t care that much right now. Snow was beginning to accumulate on his beard, eyebrows, and even his glasses, which he had to wipe off with his gloved fingers once every few minutes.

“J-Jesus,” shuddered Alyx, “it’s r-really cold out h-here.”

They had to have been walking for another forty-five minutes before Gordon started to get increasingly concerned about her condition. She seemed to be having difficulties concentrating on walking, a glazed-over expression that told him she was confused about where she was. When he realized how bad she was getting it sent a spark flying down his spine, and he realized how critical it was to find somewhere to take her before she got worse, because that was all she could do if he didn’t find a way to warm her up immediately.

Then, like a miracle, he saw through the falling snow an abandoned ranch. And in front of it, _him._ He adjusted his tie as he typically did and lingered only a moment before calmly rounding the corner of the barn and disappearing. Now he understood why it was too good to be true, it was the will of his mysterious employer. Even so, he was overjoyed to find the place and moved Alyx as quickly as he could into the quaint home next to the fenced-in barn. The door was frozen shut, something he had to remedy by standing her nearby and taking the crowbar from her pack before shoving it into the doorjamb and prying it free. It cracked open under the pressure of the tool and he kicked it open to bring her inside, first handing her back the crowbar and then motioning for her to give him her pistol; it would be too much effort to try and get one of the other guns out from his backpack when she had one on her hip. Blankly, she stared at him for a minute before something in her freezing brain clicked into place and she looked down to get it from her holster and hand it to him. He took the small thing in his larger hands and fiddled with it for a moment, having difficulty both from never having held it before and also having a second pair of gloves on. Holding it to the floor, he guided her inside with a hand around her shoulders and then stopped her just past the front door to close it behind them. He held up one hand to tell her to wait there; she nodded slowly and gazed around as he rounded the corner around the living room into the kitchen to check for zombies. Kitchen clear.

Rotting wooden stairs led up to the bedrooms and bathroom on the top floor of the tiny house. There were two bedrooms from what he could tell down a short, narrow hallway. He kicked in the first door on his left first—the bathroom. A combination shower and tub sat farthest from him, blocked by a toilet and finally, closest, a small vanity with an old, dirty sink. After he got Alyx warmed up again his next mission would be looking underneath for extra medical supplies. He crept closer to the bathtub and, after a few long moments of hesitation, ripped the shower curtain to the side to reveal a zombie sitting in the tub. Without any thought he shot it with several light-fast bullets out of her gun, but it didn’t move. Its corpse barely responded to the bullets at all. He realized then that it, along with the headcrab, had frozen to death. His blood ran cold.

Gordon backed all the way out of the bathroom until his shoulders hit the wall of the hallway. He would have to check the bedrooms now, though he felt considerably less nervous about finding anything living in this icy place. The first bedroom he infiltrated was completely empty upon inspection. The walls were painted a sort of banana-pudding color, with light blue curtains covering the window and various other shades of blue scattered throughout, a gray quilt rested softly on a twin-sized bed. This had to have been a little boy’s room at one point in time. He would be back for the quilt.

Next, the final bedroom, almost definitely the one belonging to the parents of that boy. He kicked it and immediately heard a crunching as it swung open only a few inches. After a couple of seconds he pushed it open further with his hand and felt the resistance behind the door. When he walked into the room he saw not one but two headcrab zombies’ bodies on the ground beside the door, as well as scratch marks on the inside. He paused in shock when he observed the size of one of the dead—it was the little boy, no older than ten. Gordon’s glove rose to cover his mouth out of complete horror for what he was seeing. He hadn’t seen a single child since he arrived here in this grim future, for there were none. To finally see one and for him to be dead by such a gruesome fate was almost too hard to bear, so much so that, for a moment, he almost forgot about Alyx downstairs.

He stomped, practically ran down the hallway and back down the stairs to find her, and at first he couldn’t see her as he rounded the corner. Shit. _No._

“Alyx,” he breathed out, barely sounding like a name and more like a confused sigh. He had to find her. His stumbling feet took him to the entryway of the home and he peered out the frosted window, squinting to try and find her in the snow. Oh, God, no, she can’t be out there. She wouldn’t wander back outside. He pivoted quickly around to check the lower level of the house one last time before he saw her, curled into a fetal position on the living room sofa, asleep. No, she couldn’t go to sleep. “Alyx,” he huffed again as he rushed towards the couch to shake her awake. She jolted under his grip and looked around in a complete daze.

“Let me sleep, Gordon,” she slurred. “I’m so tired.”

Panic started setting in. He forced her upright and found anything he could put around her, first starting with his own parka. Next he sprinted back up the stairs, tripping when one of the rotten boards caved under his weight, and came back with the quilts and sheets from both beds. He wrapped all of these around her, creating several thick layers of heat that she curled right into. Now he would have to worry about warming the house around them. As soon as he knew she wasn’t going to try to fall asleep on him again, and that she would be relatively safe if she did try, he rose from his kneeling position by the small sofa and scanned the room for sources of warmth. He spotted a gas range.

 _Please still work, please still work,_ he chanted to himself over and over as he made his way over to it and pressed the knob inward. It did its typical _click-click-click_ followed by the sound of fire starting as he turned it to high. When it succeeded to start his first instinct was to sigh in relief and thank the man—despite his unsureness of what exactly he really was. There were a handful of kitchen towels in one of the drawers; if he could boil some water on the stovetop he could create hot towels to drape over her and heat her up faster. He reached over to one of the sinks handled and turned it… and nothing came out except for a low drone of complaint as the frozen pipes refused to do what they were told. He sighed and turned the knob back into place to stop the noise. There were probably years worth of ice trapped in the pipes below the house and he had no way of setting it free. However, an epiphany struck him and he realized that they were surrounded by clean water in the form of snow.

A big stew pot that sat in one of the cabinets seemed to be the ideal vessel for carrying in the fluff to be boiled. He gave Alyx a quick look to make sure she was still on the couch and awake before opening the door and braving the cold wind again to scoop a potful of snow off the ground. The front door took some effort to close and stay closed again from the hard winds and his handiwork getting it open in the first place. He had a feeling they’d need to barricade it if they decided to open it too many more times after this. Perhaps it was better to keep it closed for the time being, and hopefully one pot of water would be all he needed to get her back to her normal self. 

While the snow melted in the pot and slowly came to a bubble, he sat next to her. He wasn’t sure how comfortable she would normally be with him touching her, so he was cautious to do so, but he did put his arm around the heap of blankets that surrounded her form and rubbed to create more heat. She didn’t protest, and her eyes seemed to focus more than they did before, indicative of recovery.

“Did… what…” her brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of what had happened in the past fifteen or so minutes.

“It’s okay,” mouthed Gordon, shaking his head. _You’re okay now. Thank God._

Her forehead stayed crinkled in thought as she stared at nothing in particular. Slowly, as he continued to create hot friction on the blankets with his hands, she leaned her double-hooded head onto his shoulder to rest there. 

She spoke again, and a tinge of humor was apparent in her voice. “You saved me again.”

This made his stomach feel upset for whatever reason. It was a specific feeling he’d never experienced before and didn’t want to be experiencing. Alarmed, his eyes shuffled around the room for a few long seconds before he gently helped her back into an upright position and abruptly got up from the couch to check on the water. Tiny bubbles had begun to form on the bottom of the pot, shimmying their way up and out, and gloriously hot steam flew above the stove. He could’ve put his face right up to the water to warm up, let his glasses glaze over with fog, but he knew he had a job to do. Removing the now warmed water from the stove, but keeping it on to warm the room until he could figure out how else to, he carefully submerged the towels and wrung them out over the pot before bringing them to her in a stack. It was almost like a spa treatment, but instead of being relaxing for anyone involved it was completely necessary to avoid dying horribly.

He stripped the blankets and sheets off of her and helped her take off the parkas, her leather jacket, then her Black Mesa sweatshirt, to leave just a white undershirt and what he assumed was an old sports bra underneath. The unusual proximity to her body flustered him like it was something he wasn’t supposed to be seeing as he lay the towels over her, first the largest around her shoulders, a small one on each arm, and the remaining two on her thighs as she sat in a criss-cross position on the sofa. He put the parkas back around her without making her put the sleeves back on, adjusted the hoods, and wrapped her once again in her cocoon to leave her to heat up. That should help until the heat ran out from the cloths, which he’d have to watch very closely to make sure they didn’t simply make her cold again. 

“Thank you,” she murmured, moving her head to look up at him for the first time since their arrival. “I was doing pretty bad, wasn’t I?”

He paused before nodding slowly, coming back over to sit next to her. His stomach panged again. Dammit, he wasn’t about to open one of those army meals anytime soon. Alyx let out a small laugh. “Serves me right for not taking your jacket.”

There was a long silence before she decided to speak again, curled up tight in the blankets and many layers of outerwear. “I’m feeling a lot better but I don’t think we should risk the cold again. Especially since there are Combine helicopters patrolling. We should stay here and rest.”

He could not protest her orders any less. Rest sounded _amazing_ after their hour-long trek through the snow. His legs were completely exhausted from stomping around, and he was weary after the scare with Alyx’s temperature. She was speaking again now, though, and smiling, and that was an incredible sign. She was almost back to her regular self.

Gordon got up from the sofa again to go to where he had thrown down his knapsack. He produced a box of matches from the side pocket and proceeded to use it to try and light the fireplace, which was a fruitless effort due to the dampness of the wood. He decided to sacrifice one of the dining chairs in between the kitchen and living room to use as kindling. A second match, and with a _whoosh,_ flickering orange and yellow burst to life before their eyes. Now they were in business, and he could turn off the stove.

“Good job, Gordon!” praised Alyx. “I can take these towels off now.” And she did exactly that, coming out of her cocoon and removing the towels one by one and placing them into a neat pile to dry by the fireplace. She lifted herself from the couch and maneuvered her blankets around the coffee table to sit on the floor in front of it. “Mmm,” she hummed happily as she closed her eyes and let the warm glow bathe her and dance on her olive skin. 

He turned off the stove and let the pot of remaining water sit in case they needed it for drinking. “Hey, Gordon,” he heard from the living room, causing him to turn around. She had moved the coffee table out of the way and laid down all of the blankets on top of one another on the floor by the fireplace, creating a soft and warm place to sit. “I think we should sleep out here. I’ll flip you for the couch!” she quipped, pulling a quarter out of her pocket. Where she got this random change he didn’t have a clue, though he supposed it had to be useful for something to carry it around. He came around the couch and sat down next to her on the ground. “Heads, I get it, tails, you do.”

She flicked the coin up into the air and caught it, slapping it to the back of her other hand. “Tails. Damn. At least I get to be closer to the fire.” 

She stood up and grabbed the end of one of the blankets, causing Gordon to realize what she was doing and scramble to his feet to let her. The top quilt folded in her arms and she threw it onto the couch for him before sitting back down. “There you go.”

He nodded a thank-you to her. She seemed… okay right now, as far as the events of yesterday were concerned. They buried Eli in a very rushed ceremony at her request so that they would be able to leave the next morning. Isaac tearfully shared a tribute to his lost friend and read from the old Bible Vance had kept in his office all these years. _The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the path of righteousness for his name’s sake._ Whether Gordon or any of Eli’s other friends and family members believed that was definitely debatable, but the thought of the existence of a heaven where he would be able to stay in peace soothed him, and he assumed it probably did for others, too, agnostic or otherwise.

Alyx looked very calm right now. No tears, no outbursts of anger or sorrow. Part of him was relieved to see her doing so well, however another part worried that she was internalizing her grief. Either way, he wouldn’t dare bring it up even if he could speak. He would let her deal with it the way she was going to deal with it.

“Are you hungry? I know I am.” She rose from the blankets and went over to her backpack to fine one of the MREs. Gordon cringed as he watched her hunched over it. “I know it’s not the best,” she remarked, smirking back at his expression, “but food is food. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. I know you haven’t been eating like this long.”

Her hand extended to hand him a box shrink-wrapped in dark green plastic. It had cryllic characters all over it, none of which he could read except for и, which didn’t exactly help him. He tore the plastic at its weak point and opened the bag to reveal the small, brown box that contained the food. Before he cast the packaging aside, though, a little label caught his eye, which seemed to contain the expiration date: 12.06.2004. These had to have been made a good twenty-five years ago, he realized, grimacing a little harder. But, what else was he going to eat? Definitely not headcrab stew. He wasn’t that desperate—yet.

The box opened and revealed a mess of small packages that he couldn’t decipher. Alyx picked up one of the three spoons inside and showed him the packets one-by-one. “ _Cахар,_ that’s sugar,” she began. “ _Cоль,_ salt, and _перец,_ that’s pepper.” He was deeply impressed with her knowledge of Russian despite his understanding that it must have been a necessity for many Resistance members to learn in the early days of relocations. “Ooh, coffee!” she exclaimed with joy as she pulled it out of the box. “That’ll be perfect tomorrow morning.”

She ushered all of the bigger tin containers away to just in front of the fireplace and handed him a packet of crackers to open. “This is cheese,” she explained as she opened a smaller tin that contained a yellow substance, “and this is… it’s like a pâté thing. It’s not bad.”

Pâté. He wasn’t sure about that. He wasn’t sure about _any_ of this, but he was hungry and was willing to be a good sport. She used one of the spoons to shovel a good amount of the paste onto a cracker. “Here. Try it.”

It tasted vaguely of chicken, though fattier and obviously a different texture entirely. She was right, actually, it wasn’t all that terrible. She seemed pleased when he made an expression of approval. “You’ll like the cheese, I think. It’s my favorite.” The spoon pulled out a good chunk of the cheese and she smiled as she ate the cracker which contained it. “Oh, man, I haven’t had one of these in forever. I think the last time I did it was when my dad and I…”

Oh, no. She froze, realizing. Gordon braced for impact.

She pursed down hard on her lips as they began to quiver, and her eyes threatened tears. “Sorry.” All he could think to do was to reach out and touch her, but she leaned away, putting a hand up to block him. “No,” she insisted with a short sniff. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

Much less happily, existing somewhere else in her mind, she handed him one of the spoons and took the remaining of the first pack of crackers while sliding the second over to him. They ate in relative silence, only the sound of crinkling and crunching as well as the low popping of the fire remedying the room’s desperation for sound. He felt so horrible. There was simply nothing that he was capable of doing to make her feel better, and it frustrated him to no end.

“These should be warmer now,” said Alyx absently as she drug the larger tins over to where they sat and opened them up. “Meat and potatoes.”

He cut down the middle of each tin with his spoon to split the food evenly, and looked up at her with a sympathetic smile. She gazed tenderly at him for a moment before blinking back down to her dinner and beginning to eat it faster. Slightly offended, he continued to eat his at the same pace knowing she probably wanted to get the hell away from him.

“We can save the sweet stuff for breakfast tomorrow. Coffee, tea, apple jam, and energy bars.”

After finishing her share of the food, Gordon nearly done with his own, she got up from the blankets on the floor and grabbed a set of folded clothing from the sack. “I’m going to go change upstairs. You can change in here, I brought clothes for you, too.”

He watched her go up the rickety stairs, hoisting herself up over the broken one with ease, before putting his meal down on the ground and looking in the backpack for the clothes she spoke of. It looked like it was a City 17 uniform, a white button-down shirt along with dark blue jeans and a navy jacket to match, of course including underwear and a pair of wool socks. He was grateful for the opportunity to get out of the HEV suit, but he wasn’t sure he felt safe enough. He would probably keep it on, just for tonight, in case the Combine made a surprise visit to the house they were squatting in. After all, Overwatch seemed to always know where they were—whether the portal was open or closed.

His food was just about gone when he heard her coming back down the stairs, changed into a thick black sweater, probably also made of wool, and a new pair of thicker jeans, made for the occasion. “I know it’s only six or so but I’m completely exhausted.” She seemed not to want to acknowledge her break in mood, but she did pause when she noticed he hadn’t changed. “Oh, you’re going to keep the suit on?” He looked down at his chest and then nodded. “Okay. To each his own. Anyway, I’m going to sleep.”

Again, Gordon nodded, in agreement with her sentiment of complete fatigue. He could use some well-earned rest before they took off to continue their search for Borealis. He quickly cleaned up the remnants of their meal and folded the trash neatly together into the box before getting up to set it on the kitchen counter and retreat back to the couch. Pulling the quilt she had given him very awkwardly over his bulky armor, he lied down on his back and stared up at the ceiling. 

“Goodnight.” Alyx nestled into a blanket-wrapped ball at the fireside, back turned away from him.

He just wished there was something he could do. All he wanted was the ability to say _goodnight_ back to her, or to say _I’m so sorry_ or just _I’m here for you._ But he couldn’t, because of his goddamned ridiculous ailment that he thought had long since left him alone well after childhood. He felt like a toddler standing behind his mother’s leg, unable to speak due to fear of the scary tall man standing before him. Instead, he was a grown adult who was too scared to talk while one of his only friends nearly froze to death next to him, not her first brush with death. 

The thought reminded him of what the Vortigaunts had done with him in the mines. They weaved the two of them together somehow in a way neither understood, or may ever fully understand. His life is what saved hers. If she died, would he? If he died, would she? Could they feel it? Could she sense how deeply he wanted to do anything that could possibly help her? Is that why she was so good at translating his nonverbal cues?

There were too many questions about too many things for him to focus well enough. He hadn’t slept well the night before and didn’t expect to tonight, either. So, he stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours until unconsciousness decided to finally sweep over him in the sunlit house.


	2. A Terrible Compound

It was so terribly dark. It wasn’t usually like this at all; fluorescent buzzes constantly filled the air and the back of his ears, a maddening hum. A constant. Most of the lights were out now and the only thing separating him from the pitch blackness was the dim beam protruding from the center of his chest plate. It was hardly enough, but it was something. 

The lights that weren’t completely dead yet flickered wildly, some even raining periodical sparks down onto him. He was afraid they’d start a fire—well, another fire, in fact. He felt anxious pertaining to the integrity of the facility after the damage it had sustained. Steel beams and concrete were only so strong, and while he knew the underground haven in the middle of this desert was built to be plenty capable, under the Department of Defense, no less, it was also built with materials that could turn him into a fine paste under their weight. He remained wary as he roamed, his ears still ringing and lending him barely a fraction of the hearing they usually gave. All that he heard was a high whine as his brain reeled in his skull, and the faint roar of fire all around him. He could hardly remember which lab it was that he had passed only a few minutes ago, but the entire thing was consumed with flames.

A few vents and a few headcrab bites led him through the ceiling into a dilapidated office corridor. Every time he passed one of the windows it flickered back to him a reflection of his own face, sweaty, bloody, tired. New scratches and welts piled up each time he passed one of these windows. He had to force himself to stop looking. It was so much easier to ignore his sense of self right now, to just carry on and go forward without stopping to examine the deep cuts he knew would get infected. Each window came and went without so much as a glance for a while, until once when he finally gave in to the urge to check and looked up. He did not see a reflection. He saw nothing staring back at him. Gordon ran towards the glass and put his gloved hand on it. All he saw was closed blinds and a squish of red that came off of his palm. This can’t be right. He couldn’t just lack a reflection altogether.

Something primal told him to turn around. The moment he obliged that feeling he was filled with regret and fear—as he looked down at the wall of the hallway he lay at his own feet, dead. He began to back up as far and as fast as he could go, and as soon as his back hit the farther wall he felt a jolt fill his body. The ceiling of an old ranch house came into focus. His heart pounded.

“You alright in there, Gordon?” A familiar voice called to him from his left, behind the couch on which he was lying. Alyx.

Uhh, yep, he would’ve stammered out if he had the ability. I’m fine, he’d say even though his chest felt like it was going to explode and his entire body felt sore from sleeping stiffly in the suit the entire night. He wasn’t sure if he had moved an inch the whole time he was asleep—when he _did_ manage to be asleep—and he realized he couldn’t feel his arm at all as it hung off the side of the sofa, most likely caught against the harsh edge of the bicep piece of his armor, cutting off blood flow. He sat upright with a soft moan of discomfort and clutched his numb arm in his good hand.

“Are you more of a coffee or a tea guy?” asked Alyx as he stumbled tiredly into the kitchen. Without a verbal response she still got her answer as he began to immediately pour himself a tall mug of coffee. She looked both bewildered and amused. “Huh. More tea for me then.”

He squinted as he tried to read the label of the power bar on the counter before remembering after a sleepy moment that it was in Russian. Flicking his eyebrows up in resignment, he opened the wrapper and took a good bite. “Listen,” she began, “we’re going to need to leave as soon as you’re awake. I have a feeling the Combine are going to be onto us soon.” He immediately looked up from his breakfast and began to shake his head in protest, but she already had a response. “I know. I almost froze to death. We don’t have another choice. Plus,” she interjected herself by pulling a few small bags out of her coat pocket—hand warmers, “I found these in the cabinets. They’re obviously way expired, but I tested one out and it still got pretty hot. I think I’ll be okay.”

Hand warmers. He wasn’t exactly convinced, but he also couldn’t think of any other way to get to Judith and her team than heading back outside on foot. Alyx peered out from behind the floral curtains on one of the windows. “It’s not snowing right now. We should finish our breakfast and then get moving.”

He took another sip of his coffee and sighed pleasantly at the taste which reminded him so much of his old home. Late nights, morning deadlines, the caffeine-fueled crunch. Energy drinks and coffee were nearly always on his breath both in grad school and at Black Mesa. Barney joked before that the amount of caffeine and sugar he drank was going to take ten years off his lifespan. Well, now only God knew how long he was going to live if he was given the opportunity to die of natural causes instead of to a Combine bullet. He was probably exposed to a hundred different chemicals that gave you cancer, and that was just the elements from Earth. No one knew what the Xenian elements did to a person. He quickly shook the thought away and out through his arm, which was now coming back to life. Coffee, this mildly disgusting protein bar, and then it was time to go.

Gordon made sure that this time he gave Alyx his parka right off the bat. He also tucked rolled up one of the quilts and stuffed it into the hole in the bag that the MRE’s absence made, just in case. He’d be damned if he let her freeze out there again. Alyx starved the fire in the chimney while he slung his pack around his arms and clipped it into place across his chest. She quickly did the same after activating one of the hand warmers and cramming the rest into a side pocket. One more time he pried the door open and set off with her north.

The chill wasn’t nearly as biting as yesterday during the awful blizzard, but the wind still scratched at his exposed face and the overnight snowfall had made it harder to walk. This would slow them down tremendously, he realized, and immediately he worried, as he did about her frequently. The mines, the hangar, now—his brain never stopped dedicating an entire section of his thoughts to her and her wellbeing. He had such a profound respect for her as a fighter, as a woman, a daughter, a leader, a friend. So many responsibilities rested upon her shoulders and she carried them with such grace and nonchalance, like there was no task too difficult for her. Even now, two days after her father’s death, she trudged on through the snow in honor of him. She kept going for Eli. She was so unbelievably strong, and he admired her so deeply for it despite only knowing her less than a week.

“This feels a lot better than yesterday,” she yelled against the howling wind. “I’m still cold, but I think I can go on a lot longer.”

That announcement was music to his ears as they continued their trek through easily eighteen inches of snow now, quite a ways up his leg. He felt bad for Alyx who didn’t benefit quite as much when it came to height, though she was still a tall woman. His nearing six feet tall helped a lot to widen his strides and make it easier for him to bound through the thick snow, while he had to stop occasionally to let her hop along after him, or sometimes even lean on him to get some of it out of one of her boots. When she grabbed his arm to keep herself upright as she shook out her shoe, standing on one foot, he felt something despite the metal of his armor keeping him from her gentle touch. He looked over her as her head was turned downward towards her boot and observed how her jacket hugged her thin form, the soft curvature of her hips and thighs leading down to her strong calves. He remembered last night and his proximity to her breasts under her thin white shirt and attempted to hide his flushed face. He couldn’t think of that right now, it was downright shameful of him—he hardly knew her and he was already thinking of her in such a sexual context. For Christ’s sake, the daughter of one of his best friends, dead, no less. He took a deep breath of icy air and let it slowly escape his mouth, fogging in front of him. Enough of that. 

As he shook these immoral thoughts out of his head, something dark approached in the fog. Something absolutely gigantic lay in their path. He watched Alyx squint, brow deeply furrowed, as she tried to make it out, and as they led up onto it she voiced her realization. “Combine.”

It was an absolutely enormous compound. This had to have been the place to which Judith had been trying to lead them; there was nothing else that came to his mind that could possibly be so imposing, dark, and intricate on the outside as a piece of Combine architecture, and this fit every criteria and more. It looked hauntingly of Nova Prospekt, black panels extending upward hundreds of feet, peppered with what he assumed to be tall guard towers, each fit with mounted soldiers to patrol the grounds surrounding.

“This isn’t going to be as easy as just marching up,” Alyx commented quietly.

They stopped in their tracks to remove their backpacks and retrieve the weapons and ammunition they would need to take down the inevitable soldiers that would come their way. First, though, they’d need to eliminate a few of the towers to guarantee themselves a safe way to get in. Gordon’s crossbow still had ten bolts left and he was ready to use them; carefully, he raised it up to his chin and squinted one eye shut to see through its scope; he immediately shook his head to signal to Alyx that they weren’t close enough for him to get a good shot. They would need to come closer. Luckily, much of the snow around the complex had been scraped away to reveal dirt for convoys of vehicles to come and go. A large circle of unsoiled ground surrounded the area, and around that was a ring of tall snow piles pushed out of the way. The two hoped they’d be able to sneak forward without detection if they hid behind these.

“Let’s try to find an entrance. If we have to go through the front door then that’s just what we’ll do.”

The team trotted around the circular ring of snow, looking up every now and again at their target to find anywhere to penetrate the otherworldly metals that barricaded what Gordon could only imagine must be the Borealis. There was no other reason that came to mind for them to exhaust resources to build such a large compound; the Combine were fond of reusing and rearranging preexisting earthly architecture to fit their needs, so this was quite uncharacteristic of them outside of the horrifying Citadel they had once erected in the middle of the old Ukrainian city that became 17.

Finally, after much starting and stopping, running and then quickly halting to check for doors, imperfections, anything, with the scope of the crossbow, Gordon alerted Alyx to a place in one of the panels that had been bent open. He had no idea how or why, but what he did know was that he was tremendously grateful for it. “That’s perfect,” she commented quietly, grinning. “Good job, Gordon.”

The gentle praise and her smile set off some kind of firework in him, and he had to try his best to control that feeling so that he could make the shots they needed. Carefully mounting the crossbow on the wall of snow, he gazed into the scope once more and aimed the bolt at the tower nearest to the break in the wall. The trigger’s pull caused a _ka-thunk_ which set the bolt coursing through the air at a high enough speed to pierce the armor of one of the Overwatch soldiers and send it careening into the wall behind him. If the wall hadn’t been quite so impervious Gordon imagined the soldier could have been pinned to it like one had ended up in the later days of City 17, as he escorted citizens and rebels to the escape train. It was a gruesome sight that he didn’t care to see again.

This action alerted the other guard on the tower, and he knew he had to eliminate it as well before it decided to make a distress call to the rest of the soldiers around them. Taking just another two or three seconds to reload and aim, his second bolt pierced the mask of the soldier and sent it falling down into the snow to stain it crimson.

With an open window to climb inside the huge complex, they both hopped up, slung their packs back around their shoulders, and began to sprint to the hole in the wall. Over their heads alarms began to blare and give notice to their presence, prompting them to run harder and faster than they thought they could. It would be a race against the clock if they wanted to get to the Borealis without being spotted by more soldiers than they would be capable of taking down. Immediately after getting indoors Gordon hunched over and groped at the cramp in his side, gasping deeply for air to fill his body with oxygen again. Alyx’s body heaved much less than his, hardened and trained by many years of athletic work; she didn’t sympathize much with his need to stop. “We need to keep going,” she ordered through her softer huffs.

Just one second, Gordon’s one extended finger seemed to say as he remained doubled over, other hand on his knee. It was downright mortifying how out of shape he was in comparison to her tremendous fitness, though as much as he desperately wished he could keep moving without having to stop and catch his breath, he couldn’t ignore the stitch in his side long enough to go anywhere. After a few seconds full of annoyance from his partner, he nodded and followed her lead to keep going.

This outer ring of the interior of this strange building was quite similar to that of the Citadel, which had created a chasm around it that went down for what seemed like miles, the bottom obstructed by dust, fog, and other particles that made it impossible to see very far in that direction. The two of them climbed through a jungle of misplaced metal fixtures which led… somewhere, most likely to some narrow Citadelian corridor as the Combine were so fond of creating, to wider areas where power rooms and such were placed. He regretted that the gravity gun, nestled in the bottom of the bag on his back, did not hold the same power that it did before to crush physical matter. Perhaps there would be another room similar to that of the Citadel where his weapons had been evaporated all except for that one.

Alyx and Gordon walked in a single file line with her in front as they canvassed the area and tried to make their way closer to the center of the compound. Similar but not the same would be the way he would describe it compared to the Citadel, close in tone with the lighting and the cold, dark, smooth walls that lined the narrow halls, but the layout was quite different. Alyx crept around a corner and then quickly and suddenly stepped backwards. “Soldiers,” she mouthed, raising her gun and preparing to fight. Gordon scrambled to attach the crossbow back to his backpack and retrieve the shotgun. At her count, they burst forth from behind the corner and came out guns blazing, mowing down the pack of half a dozen soldiers before they even had the chance to understand what was happening. One remained and attempted to shoot but its gun jammed; Alyx took this opportunity to knee it in its chest and punch it, knocking it out cold before placing one good-natured bullet between the eye sockets of its mask. He couldn’t help but find it incredibly sexy the way that she fought, confidently, such a badass rage almost visibly flaming through her as she took out each enemy with ease, like she was angry at their mere existence. He had to stifle how badly he wanted to let her know. He couldn’t, not now, possibly not ever.

“C’mon, let’s go find a control room. We need to tell Dr. Kleiner that we’re here, plus I might be able to figure out if Judith is here.” Alyx took off in front of him and he followed, deeply startled. There was a dark hint of contempt and grief in her voice as she spat Dr. Mossman’s name. He worried profusely of what would come to them when they met again for the first time and Alyx would have to explain to her father’s lover that he was dead. The last time she saw him was in the Citadel; she must’ve taken off immediately for the Arctic from there, and made quite quick work of it. Imagining the grief that would flow through her when she finally found out about Eli’s fate could have broken him, so he tried not to picture the shaking in her shoulders as she sobbed for her lost loved one.

A small room off to the side yielded exactly what they were searching for: a panel of Combine buttons and other controls, complete with three big screens. Alyx scurried into the room and used her electric multitool to lock the mechanical door behind them. With a few clicks of the keys, fingers moving like lightning (while Gordon couldn’t even begin to comprehend the technology—he was never exactly a fast typist), a flash of static burst forth onto the screen. “White Forest. Come in, White Forest!” she pleaded. “Do you read?”

“Alyx!” Isaac’s voice came choppily through the speakers of the station and his head and shoulders quickly flew into view as he approached his own communication center. “By Schrödinger’s cat, you worried me half to death! When I didn’t hear from you yesterday I thought…” The old man cleared his throat. “Well. That doesn’t matter now, you’re clearly alright.”

“We found the Borealis. Well, where we think it is, anyway.”

“You found it?! That’s incredible!”

“The only problem is it’s surrounded by a huge Combine complex,” she explained. “There are guards everywhere. They’re going to be onto us soon.”

“I’ll keep this brief then. Have you located Dr. Mossman?”

“No, not yet. That’s our next step.”

“Good. Please update us again as soon as you are able.” Isaac took a pause, but then quickly spoke again. “Oh, um— Alyx. One more thing.”

“What is it?”

His expression turned earnest. “You’re very brave, dear.”

“...Thank you,” replied Alyx quietly. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Goodbye, and good luck.”

“Bye.”

Alyx ended the transmission with another flash of grey and black and leaned her hands on the control board for a few moments, head sinking downwards. He saw her shoulders heave as she sucked in a large breath and then audibly let it out through pursed lips. “Okay,” she stated firmly. “Let’s see if Judith is anywhere to be found.”

Standing back upright, she returned her attention to the screen as she cycled through security camera footage to try and find their next destination. While Judith was definitely intelligent, it didn’t take idiocy to be captured by the Combine. An interrogation room might be their best bet to find her, and hopefully alive.

“Aha. Found her.” And Gordon’s hunch was right—there she was, sitting in the bloodied chair of a questioning room, slightly bloodied herself. Her information was far too valuable to kill her, however. Even though the Adviser that had murdered Eli had escaped with all of his knowledge of the Resistance, there were some things about both sides that only Judith knew. “I think I can track her down. Follow me, and keep your shotgun loaded.”

As she used her little utility once again to take down the light field to escape, Gordon quickly loaded a couple more caps into his shotgun and cocked it. Alyx traded her multitool for her gun in one swift movement as the field came down and the two made their escape through the now open archway. The sound of soldiers’ bootsteps filled the corridor and they quickly raised their weapons to fire—one soldier managed to get a shot in as they were picked off one by one, which pinged painfully off of Gordon’s shoulder plate, causing him to let out a small gasp as it ricocheted. The armor of the HEV suit was not unlike a kevlar vest, which protected the user’s skin from penetration, but did very little to stop the speed of the bullet itself; the pain of impact simply radiated through a wider area instead of piercing. When all the foreseeable soldiers were down she gave him a quick look of concern before he nodded and shrugged it off. Hurt like hell, but wasn’t the end of the world.

They marched on through the dark, winding halls of the outskirts until they came to a considerable ledge not much different from the one in the Citadel where they had watched a gunship take flight and immediately crash. This time, however, only transhuman soldiers canvassed the place instead of the other creatures they had seen before. The new lack of connection to the Combine Overworld must have cut them off from their supply of superweapons, leaving only earthly creatures to do their bidding. Gordon and Alyx trudged forward past the no-longer-people below.

Eventually, after several long minutes of walking carefully, they came to an area of the facility that had doors quite similar to that of the train station in all of the cities under Combine control, including City 17—a wide hallway lined with metal doors on each side, locked with extraterrestrial technology, open slots looking inward to each room. “She’s got to be here somewhere. I’ll take the left side.”

And with that, both of them set off down the hallway peeking into each open window with stealth to avoid detection by whoever may be inside. They must’ve checked ten, fifteen rows of doors before Gordon suddenly reached out and grabbed her arm. There she was. Alyx whirled around to face him and peered into the room. Gordon saw something in her eyes change when she pulled her tool off her belt once more and used it to release the lock. It hissed and he watched Judith peer up at them. Her eyes grew large. “Gordon! Alyx!”

Alyx entered the interrogation room first and he filled with dread. It was time to tell her.


	3. Joyride

“You.”

Anger bubbled and boiled over in Alyx’s chest as she gazed at this woman who sat before her. She thought she could keep her cool. She thought she would be able to speak to her calmly and avoid the rage and the sadness and the deep, deep emotional turmoil in the pit of her soul like she had up until now. She thought wrong. “You. It was _you!”_ she screamed out in agony.

“What?” Judith replied with concern and confusion. “What did I—”

_”You killed him! You killed my father! You!”_

The fury that had been boiling inside of her spilled all over, absolutely flooding her, white hot, seething. She watched almost in slow motion as Mossman rose from the interrogation chair to stand, grief growing on her face. Before a single word could escape the older woman’s mouth, Alyx’s hand reared back and slapped her across the jaw. Immediately she felt two large hands behind her pulling her backwards. “No! Gordon, get the _hell_ away from me!”

Judith shuddered and grasped carefully at the spot on her face where red was beginning to grow from the impact. “Eli’s… he’s dead?” If she hadn’t been so horrifically angry she would’ve felt a twinge of empathy for the woman, but she couldn’t bring herself to it. All she felt was grief and rage. If Judith hadn’t sent those coordinates, if they hadn’t gone out to the hangar because of her, if her dad hadn’t been there when the Advisors came _all because of her,_ everything would be okay. But it wasn’t. It was never going to be okay because of _Judith._

“I hate you,” growled Alyx like a tiger intimidating its prey. “I hate you!”

_”Alyx!”_

Gordon’s hands released her arms and she whirled around in complete shock. That was neither Judith’s voice nor her own; it was of a man. It was his voice. He looked ashamed, surprised by the sound of her name out of his mouth. He didn’t say another word but his silence spoke volumes.

As she shared at him her rage tried to expand, to explode, but instead it only yielded to his kind face. All she wanted to do was break down and sob into the chest plate of his HEV suit, wrapping her arms around her friend’s back and letting herself sink into him. She had felt something different about him the moment that she met him—part of it in the beginning was certainly wonder at his mere existence after hearing so many stories about his triumphs both before and during the Black Mesa Incident. Another part, though, was certainly an attraction. This was no time to think about it, but it was hard to push away when he was right there and he had just said her name. He was so available, so _right there_ to comfort her. But she couldn’t bring herself to be that vulnerable right now as she shook and wept in the spot where she stood.

She turned back to face Judith, a finger poking accusingly toward her reddened face. “If we wouldn’t have left to get on that fucking helicopter he would still be alive. He died because of _your_ distress call and now I have to come rescue you.”

“Alyx, I don’t understand,” pleaded Mossman, tears welling in her eyes. “How did this happen?”

She sucked in a shaky breath through her teeth as she began to storm back and forth, pacing. Her hands still trembled wildly. “We were in the hangar about to l...leave for the coordinates _you_ sent us…” She bit down on her lip and shook her head with a disgusted expression covered in tears, unable to continue.

She heard a quiet voice finish her thought. “An Adviser extracted his brain. He died instantly.” Gordon’s voice was haunting to hear after so many days of complete silence from him. She could sense his fear, his desire to speak but his inability to combat the conflicting reports inside of his body. It wasn’t atypical for her to go quiet in moments of such stress, though a more common reaction was for her to get louder, as she had in this room.

“What?” Judith breathed, and immediately fell back into the chair. Alyx watched as he swooped in to catch her, to help her ease into it. She felt revolted at his kindness towards her; when he had the chance to he always picked kindness, and in any other moment it wouldn’t infuriate her the way it did right now. Dr. Mossman’s hand cupped her mouth as she started to cry, first softly, then metamorphosing into billowing wails.

“Shut _up!”_ Alyx screamed without a second thought. “You don’t get to cry over him right now! We have shit to do!”

For the first time ever, she saw anger flash in Gordon’s eyes right into her own. She had witnessed rage from him before, plenty of times. Typically, however, the Combine were the recipients, and not her. He didn’t have to say another thing for her to get the message and take a step backwards, face still scrunched in annoyance. How dare he take her side? How dare he protect her? She caused this. Her double-agency is exactly what got them into this mess.

“I’m so sorry, Alyx,” she mewled with devastation. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt him. I can’t believe… Oh, God…”

“Tell us where the ship is.” Her voice was cold, dark, sinister. She had dedicated herself to unfeeling the emotions that had welled up in her throat the moment she saw this detestable woman; now, it was time to accomplish what they came so far to do.

Judith choked back another sob before preparing to answer her. “It’s very convoluted. There’s a research outpost not far from here, hopefully it remains untouched by the Combine. If we can just get to it, then I’ll be able to explain.”

“That’s not good enough,” she spat, continuing to pace.

“Alyx.” He spoke again. This time it sparked something in her again and she turned on her heels to face him, revving up to scream.

“Don’t _Alyx_ me!” Her finger pointed at the lambda sign on his chest. “Don’t say my name, don’t suddenly start speaking to me just to get me to be quiet! I’m allowed to be angry, alright? I’m allowed to feel whatever the hell I’m going to feel, and if you say my name one more time I’m gonna leave you here to rot!”

His gaze humbled her. Scared. Genuinely fearful at her hand, which gnawed at her stomach. He only stared for a moment after she finished her lecture and then his eyes quickly diverted, anywhere else, anywhere but her face. She should’ve apologized, but she didn’t. Instead, a few seconds of silence passed before her voice picked back up, much calmer this time but still with a tinge of fire. “How far is the outpost?”

“Maybe a day west on foot, but I thought if we hijacked one of their vehicles we would be able to make it there in much less time.” Dr. Mossman’s voice was deep and froggy with the remains of tears, mucus closing her throat as she wept before. She had steeled herself for her own sake now.

“That’s way too risky.”

“I can’t imagine we’ll make it five hundred feet past this compound if we don’t have transportation.”

A standoff. Alyx knew that she was probably right, but her level of trust towards everyone in this room with her was shaking. They had a number of options, most which would result almost certainly in one or more of them meeting a bitter end. For one, they could remain in the facility, sealed off, like sitting ducks, with no backup militia and no more ammo than what they carried on their backs. Their second option was to leave the complex on foot, try their best to exit as they entered, and probably get shot down by snipers the moment they left. The third option was Judith’s suggestion, but there were so many things that could go wrong. If the Combine were fond of anything it was order. It wouldn’t bring her a single degree of surprise to find that each of their vehicles and possibly even soldiers had a GPS which tracked their every move to maintain control. She supposed that she would be able to disconnect it, but it seemed like Combine forces were ahead of them at every turn. She was tired of watching people die because of her.

“It won’t be easy,” she finally commented.

“It’s our only way out. The rest of my reconnaissance team is…” Judith took a deep breath and sighed out the rest of her sentence, “dead.”

It was impossible for her to continue to kid herself; there was only one way they were getting out of here and it was by hotwiring one of the jeeps. She could sit here all day in this prison cell, pondering, groping for any other possible idea, but the only thing it would do would be to put them in more danger. This was it. This was all they had.

Alyx retrieved her weapon from her belt and readied it in her hands, nodding towards Judith. “Let’s do it.” Her gaze moved on to Gordon in an attempt to assess whether or not they were on the same page, but her eyes did not meet eyes but only for a split second before his own darted elsewhere as if he was afraid to look at her for too long to prevent her snapping again. She didn’t like this version of him at all, almost more than she disliked the version that had called out her name in frustration. If not for stories told to her as a child she wouldn’t have been aware that he even spoke—and now that he had, and no longer would, she regretted silencing him. Under these layers of dirt, sadness, rage, grief, she liked the sound of her name on his lips. It wouldn’t come again for some time, she realized.

Her transition back into reality after her brief trip through guilt towards Gordon’s state was perfectly timed; not a second later they heard the boots of soldiers marching through the hall that held all of these dark interrogation rooms. Clearly they had finally found them again and were headed their way. “We’ve got company!”

Fire opened loudly in the metal corridor as Alyx took down the first soldier to cross their path; Gordon quickly went for the second and third, eagerly looting the body of a red-eyed Combine who held shells for his shotgun. Judith, having been stripped of all of her belongings but her coat and gloves, waited in the now-open room for them to give her the all clear. Most of her was grateful that she didn’t have a gun on her considering how wavering her trust currently was. 

She covered for him as he dove for the extra bullets, piercing chests of transhuman soldiers with no effort as they came through. She watched as one lifted its gun at her face and prepared to fire. Quickly, she ducked, calculating her next move, but before she could he put two shots through its neck and it fell. An expression of praise and gratitude would’ve come out of her mouth had she not been so angry and guilty.

The rest of the pack were quickly subdued and Gordon pulled Judith out of the room, guiding her behind as Alyx led the way. A pang of worry hit her as she wondered what he would do after this, where his mind would go after they were to safety. She worried that he would leave, though she supposed that the fact that he was tailing her without a word of protest proved where _his_ loyalty lied. Perhaps it was hers she should be concerned about.

As this wave hit her and then eased, they made their escape from the facility, stopping to kill a few more soldiers and force a few more doors open, nothing out of the ordinary for the team of heroes. Judith said she had overheard talk of a garage where they kept all of their vehicles, which she was able to confirm by hacking into another security station and finding the blueprint of the facility.

“My God. There it is.”

She also found the Borealis—or, at least, the room she assumed it resided in. It was huge, taking up most of the compound. She could only assume that the security went tighter the deeper into the facility they went, much like she had heard about the Pentagon building in the Old States, except the innermost ring of this terrible place held something that would not just threaten national security or even the world, but the universe. Eli was clear: if the Combine got their hands on the Borealis, it would be over. End of story. No climax, just a complete takeover. As he’d said about the superportal, they wouldn’t last seven minutes in another war.

“They don’t have it yet,” Judith piped up. “I-I know it seems like it, but it’s not quite there. I can explain more later.”

“I don’t like how cryptic you’re being,” replied Alyx, removing herself from the computer to keep moving toward the garage.

“I know, and I apologize. It’ll just be so much easier when we’re safe.”

She wasn’t sure how much she believed her, but she didn’t have any other options that seemed to be staring her down right now. So she continued on. The garage was about a quarter way around the building, and they were attracting more attention by the second—they needed to get going, and fast. Gordon comically pointed to a ventilation shaft that they’d easily be able to fit into, and Alyx actually stopped to consider it for a moment.

“...Okay, I know you’re kidding, but… that might not be such a bad idea.”

His face dropped, and his brow furrowed as if to say _...Really?_

“Oh, I’ve heard plenty of your vent-crawling skills, Dr. Freeman,” Mossman kidded.

“Well, go on. Get in. We’ll be right behind you.”

He looked as though he was about to open his mouth to say something, but it simply remained shut in a bit of shock. Blinking, he turned around, pried the vent’s cover off, and crawled in. Next went Alyx, a good few yards behind him to prevent messing with the integrity of the vent, and finally, Judith. She wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of Dr. Mossman being in such vivid view of her rear end, however, despite everything that had happened, she wasn’t complaining about her own view. The bulletproof bodysuit that Gordon was forced to wear under the HEV suit was… form-fitting, to say the least. It took a decent amount of effort for her to quit staring, to look forward but not _there_ as he skillfully pulled himself through the narrow shaft. Did the Combine have the heat turned up, or was it just her?

“I don’t deny that this was an excellent idea,” Judith strained as she trudged along, “but I admit I’m getting pretty tired.”

Alyx sighed to herself. She hated to admit that she was right; she was getting extremely fatigued of crawling on all fours like a marine in boot camp. “I am, too,” she breathed, stopping. Gordon wasn’t in any position to look backwards at them in the tight space but he did stop at the lack of sound behind him as the two women halted their journey. Albeit difficult to see in the dim light of just his flashlight reflecting off the metal, he lifted his hand over his shoulder and gave an okay sign before continuing to move, signalling to her that he would most likely be getting off at the next stop, so to speak.

Eventually they did come to another vent cover that led to a room below. With the crowbar still in hand, he jammed it into the bars of the cover and knocked it out, sending it shambling to the ground with several loud bangs as it hit the concrete. Him first. Without a moment of hesitation he poked his head out through the new exit and then shoved his entire body through, landing softly from what she heard with a catlike righting reflex. When she crawled up to the hole herself she saw what a steep drop it was, probably twenty feet down. She had leapt off of platforms into water or even soft grass before, but never onto concrete. But what she next saw as she looked down was not an uninviting slab for her to splat onto—instead, she saw his open arms, ready to catch her. Her heart stopped beating for a moment. Even after that anger in his eyes, even after she screamed at him and told him she would leave him, he wasn’t going to. He was prepared to catch her when she fell, in the most literal sense possible. Still.

She tried to make it as easy as possible for him to break her fall, maneuvering so that she would land feet-first instead of falling directly on her face. And like he silently promised, he caught her and hoisted her down. She barely noticed that he’d done the same with Judith (after a bit of nervous protesting) over the sound of her own blood rushing past her ears. 

The room they had fallen into seemed to be a warehouse of some kind, full of boxes and shelves stocked with supplies, ammunition, everything a soldier could need—but, thankfully, no soldiers. She took a deep breath and continued forward in the direction of the garage, which would hopefully be close now that they’d endured a pretty long stretch of crawling. It was difficult to keep herself from laughing at the outright absurdity of the situation as they went on.

Another fairly large battle played out before they were able to arrive at the garage, one which almost put a bullet right in Alyx’s shoulder. If Gordon hadn’t pulled her back at just the right time she could’ve been unable to continue, dead meat. “Whoa,” she’d exclaimed under her breath as the gravity of the situation loomed over her. “Thanks.” Soon enough with the two of them fighting and Judith very valiantly hiding behind whatever she could find, the soldiers fell and they found their destination. There were Combine everywhere in this large warehouse in which all of their jeeps and tanks resided—it didn’t seem that brute force would be the way through this time. They would have to employ some stealth to pull this off.

Gordon held a single finger up to his chin before slowly, carefully, quietly creeping to the first vehicle they could find that was not occupied or guarded. They clung close to the walls to avoid detection and did a good job of it, fortunately, for one wrong move could cut their mission short very quickly. Alyx noted that it was difficult to hear her multitool hacking the lock over the sound of chatter and movement in the large room, which created a perfect window for them to pile into the car and close the doors behind them.

_”I’ll_ drive,” she insisted to Judith.

“That’s fine, but you’ll need me to guide you.”

On cue, Gordon piled into the backseat of the jeep and allowed the two ladies to take their spots up front. His expertise, though greatly appreciated at all times, was currently not needed.

“There’s got to be some way to open one of these doors from the inside,” she muttered as she tried to take the wheel with Judith crammed in next to her. This seemed to be more of a two-person vehicle. On the control panel she saw a button that seemed correct, and time almost went in slow motion as her finger descended to press it and she suddenly saw the correct button on the wall outside. The button she had just pressed, in fact, set off an extremely loud alarm. “Shit. Shit! _Shit!_ We need to go!”

They had the attention of every single soldier in the wing now, rapidly approaching to assess the seemingly rogue vehicle. Combine technology did not malfunction. She knew before she even saw a single mask that they were aware of their presence. Without needing to be told, and before the thought to even ask crossed her mind, Gordon burst forth from the small cabin in which they sat— _”Gordon!”_ —and ran towards the button on the wall, dodging fire along the way.

“Get in, get in, get in, get in!” Alyx screamed as she put the thing into drive and prepared to burst out of the facility. Just in time, he latched onto the side of the thing and she bolted. “Jesus, Gordon, that was close!”

He quickly scrambled inside into his respective place and quietly panted, free from danger for now. The controls of this thing, while not that unlike a man-made car, were strange and complex. A mounted gun sat atop the passenger’s seat. “Gordon! Get that gun working, we’re about to have company!” And like clockwork, she saw a convoy pull out behind her, easily a dozen of the same vehicles trailing a few hundred yards behind. She floored it.

“I don’t like this!” Dr. Mossman groaned as she was crammed further towards the side of the seat to make room for Alyx. “Oh, goodness, I don’t like this.”

“Just shut up and tell me where to go!”

_BOOM!_

Gordon’s timid voice spoke from the back of the car. “Figured out the gun.”

She couldn’t help but let out a holler of entertainment as she heard another and then another blast behind them, tires screeching against ice. He must’ve known exactly where to shoot these things to make them blow. Something about a guy who could make cars explode really definitely piqued her interest, to say the least. Every now and then she looked through the rearview mirror to check on him and he had such a determined look as he gazed through the scope of the gun, the tip of his tongue caught tight between his front teeth in deep concentration. It was something he did a lot that she was pretty sure he didn’t notice he did at all, and something that secretly caught her eye every time. The glance of him in the mirror every now and then as she assessed his work on the jeeps following only brought a bigger and more chaotic smile to her face as she dodged Combine fire.

“Mossman,” she said, pulling out her little ‘rejiggerer.’ “Fry the GPS so we know we’re not being tracked.” With a nod Judith took the tool from her hand, the same one that she had once used against Wallace Breen, and marveled at it for a half-second before doing as she was told. With a bright spark, the tracking system completely shut down. “Great. They can’t follow us now.” She raised her head to look through the rearview again. “How’s it going back there, Gordon?”

Another explosion, followed by more tires, happened behind them. “I’ll take that as a good thing!”

“If we keep at this—” Judith shuddered from another loud boom. “—pace we’ll be there in an hour or so.”

“This place is that far?”

“It would be asinine to risk being any closer to the Combine’s establishment. This is about as close as we can safely be.”

The drive was long, and incredibly uneventful. After the containment of the vehicles that followed them out of the facility there was no other excitement to keep her alert—just the faintest sight of footprints where they had indented old snow and been covered anew. At least she knew she was going the right way. Miles and miles and miles and _miles_ of snow, tracks, wavering and returning, hypnotizing like the lines of a highway at night. She was still crammed in with Mossman this entire drive, Gordon stuffed in the back with nothing to do now that the gun wasn’t of any more use. It was a quiet, depressing, and overall boring ride. But, finally, after what felt like an eternity of driving through so much snow, they made it to a small research bunker out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It must’ve been built once to study some phenomena of the north, whether the midnight sun, the Aurora Borealis—and the irony of that was not lost on her—or another oddity of the Arctic Circle. They had to have had some reason to build it, and whatever it was she was thankful they had, because now they had somewhere to sleep for the night that wasn’t a Combine prison cell. 

The button that had earlier made a loud noise found itself useful this time as Alyx pressed it to alert whoever resided inside the small base. Rebels came scrambling out, expecting a fight, and were flabbergasted to see none other than their leader jump out. “Dr. Mossman!” one man yelled as he ran up to the vehicle. “What happened to the others?”

“They didn’t make it, I’m so sorry,” she apologized softly. His face fell.

“Come on, we have a garage,” another female rebel commanded Alyx, who immediately followed after allowing Gordon to get out, too. The vehicle only just barely fit in the ramped garage, but it fit nonetheless, giving them a bit of added safety, though there was no covering the tracks they’d left until another snowfall decided to grace them. After parking the large Combine jeep she hopped immediately out and went to join Gordon, Judith, and the others who had greeted them indoors. 

It was a quaint thing. A kitchen, a room whose walls were lined with cots, a bathroom, and a room that most likely once was to be used for research, but was now inhabited by stolen Combine technology reused as fuel for the Resistance. Here, they had everything they needed.

“Alright, I’ll be happy to explain now,” Judith said as she walked down the stairs into the main room, the kitchen. “Daniel, would you mind putting on a pot of coffee? I think they’ll need it.”

The now named male rebel that had been the first to come out of the bunker nodded silently and turned to the cabinets to do the work asked of him. Alyx warily followed as her two comrades—if she could call Judith that—sat at the small, four-chaired table.

“Borealis’ state is currently… complicated,” she began, mouth hanging open slightly as she grasped for her words. “I’m sure both of you are all too familiar with Aperture Science, which was located in the northernmost part of Michigan in the Old States. This, of course, was the birthplace of Borealis and the technology that made it so powerful. When the Seven Hour War happened… the ship completely disappeared. No one has been able to figure out where on Earth it went, until _now.”_ A devilish little smile spread across her face as she continued, visibly excited. “If we can infiltrate the compound again with reinforcements and stabilize the ship, Borealis will be able to materialize completely.”

“Wait… I don’t understand,” Alyx admitted and shook her head. “Materialize completely? What does that mean?”

“We have reason to believe, due to the… eccentricism of the old CEO of Aperture, that the project was significantly rushed and wasn’t complete around the time the Invasion began. The nature of the device used to give it its teleportive properties is most likely extremely unstable, which is why we think that it seems to be sort of… bouncing around back and forth in time and space, between Lake Huron in 2003, and Old Russia now.”

“...Wow.” 

“Isn’t it just incredible?” Mossman mused. “It’s probably the one good thing Aperture Science ever did. Though, I know Black Mesa’s track record isn’t exactly the cleanest at this point. I digress.”

Alyx’s brow darkened. “Don’t you realize we have to destroy it?”

“W-what?”

“It’s what my father wanted. It’s what needs to be done, we have to.”

“I don’t understand, Alyx.” Judith rose from the table. “Why would Eli possibly want that?”

She got up to meet her in stature, hands leaning on the table. “I don’t know either, Mossman, but I don’t question his dying wish.”

“Gordon?” Pleading, confused eyes met his, and he shied away, looking down at the table. “Alyx is right.”

“We can’t. We simply can’t! I-I— _Years_ have led up to this point, why on earth would—?”

“We can, and we’re going to. That is final. As your new leader I’m ordering you to help us destroy Borealis.”

“My new _leader?”_ Judith asked incredulously. “Alyx, you’re a child. You’re not fit to command an entire Resistance.”

“I am twenty-three years old, Judith, I’m not a child!”

“And yet you’d rather play outside with the Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator than complete the duties you already have!”

“I’m here, aren’t I? _This_ is my duty. As my father’s daughter this is my job. I have to follow his wishes.”

Mossman scoffed. “I don’t believe this.”

Rage started to boil again in Alyx’s heart. She was fully aware that she was about to say things she would come to regret, but right now she just needed to release the steam building inside of her. Her voice got low. “You don’t believe anything I say. You haven’t respected me since the day you wormed your way into my life, and you sure as hell don’t now, and this time, Dad isn’t here to protect you.”

“...I don’t need protection, little girl,” she growled. “You think that you know everything and you’ve always had that dangerous mentality. Well, I’m here to remind you that you _don’t_ know all of the things your father led you to believe you knew.”

“That is _enough_ from _both of you!”_

Both women jumped and turned to the HEV-clad figure that had very suddenly ripped from his chair at the table to stand, roaring out a frightening yell for such a quiet person. The entire room went stale immediately. He looked scared of himself, of his capability to be so loud. “I know why Eli wanted Borealis destroyed. We’re doing it.”

_”Why?”_ Judith pleaded, but was cut off before she could say anything further.

“I’m going to bed.”

With that, Gordon left the room, leaving the two feuding women behind in the little kitchen, along with Daniel.

“...Coffee’s ready,” he murmured fearfully.

—————

Alyx couldn’t sleep. Not that it was an oddity; she hadn’t slept more than an hour at a time since that lost battle, two spears through her chest, hands grasping at rubble. Her father’s death bumped her down to thirty minute intervals. As someone who needed her five hours—and somehow rarely more—the recent events of her life, growing more miserable by the second, had placed her in a chronic state of fatigue. Her muscles ached loudly for relief, rest. As she lay in her cot the only thing she could do was replay like a broken tape, rewind and play, rewind and play, over and over, watching Eli die and Judith cry and scream and that man in her head who had planted a message. Everything gnawed at her all at once.

Prepare for unforeseen consequences. I love you, baby. You think that you know everything.

Though she had traded her day clothes in favor of pajamas, her mother’s necklace never left her collarbone. She gently rubbed the cube-shaped pendant with her forefinger and thumb as she had a habit of doing when she needed guidance, or just reassurance. The closest Alyx had ever ventured towards religion was the vortessence, and as a practical woman of science she tried not to entertain thoughts of an afterlife or spiritual energies or anything of the sort—however, there was an undeniable feeling in her chest when she caressed the necklace in her hands. Warmth, like a hug. The idea of a piece of her mother still being with her put her at ease, and now she hoped that her father was with her, too. A single tear rolled from her eye down the side of her face and into her unkempt hair as she stared into the concrete ceiling of the bunker. Officially an orphan, she thought. As far as her age went, she was luckier than most of her peers. 

She did not feel lucky. If there was a way to describe the way that she felt it would involve a long series of wild hand gestures and a detailed description of her entrails being ripped out of her body, slowly, one inch at a time, twisted and knotted and slashed. She refused to let more than one tear fall. She refused to let this get her now. Dr. Mossman’s grief had made her so unfathomably angry because it forced her feelings upward like food her stomach was trying to reject. Her emotions wanted to explode out of her and she wanted to swallow them back down as hard as she possibly could, push them down, down, ever downward until they crammed themselves into a dense ball packed tight and stayed there. She did not want to deal with them. She hardly wanted to acknowledge that they were there at all—because if she accepted them she would have to accept their cause, and she was still very much in the denial stage. Maybe if she pretended that she was happy and everything was fine she could also pretend that her dad was still waiting for her.

A noise. A moan. Discomfort.

Alyx’s head flicked immediately to the man lying across the room; he shook and stirred in his cot in distress. Another gasp escaped him. He was having a nightmare. Gordon’s hands clung desperately to his blankets as his legs writhed, perhaps trying to run or simply to gain a foothold at all. It was horrible to watch him lying there without his suit, without protection, vulnerable in his sleep. He was a frail thing without that great armor around him.

She felt cold through her socks as her feet left the safety of her blankets to rest on the floor, and she padded carefully over to where he lay to wake him. “Gordon,” she murmured, a hand reaching out to touch his shoulder. The moment that her calloused fingers made contact with his t-shirt she flinched from a sudden jolt; upon waking he promptly grabbed her arm tight in his hand and tried to rip it off of him out of unbridled fear. Panting, wide-eyed, he looked around the room so rapidly, trying to catch his bearings and his breath.

When she got over the initial shock of her bandaged arm being squeezed and twisted, she came back to lean over him. “It’s okay,” a whisper flowed from her lips, almost motherly. “It was just a bad dream.”

She watched as he visibly softened under her soothing voice, coming back to his senses, understanding that he was safe. His unbespectacled green eyes closed and he took in a breath for a huge sigh, but it wasn’t one of relief. 

Alyx didn’t know what to do. She loomed over him like a doting parent, worried deeply for his sake, that he might go to sleep again and have the same horrific dream. She had them, too, when she managed to sleep long enough to dream. Her heartbeat made itself more apparent to her as she stared at him, disheveled in a way she hadn’t seen before—grime and blood always seemed to cover him, but this time it was in a much less… hardcore fashion. He looked unkempt in a soft, almost intimate way. Seeing him without the suit for the first time brought up some kind of emotion in her, to look at his own body instead of his faux exoskeleton and see the fabric of a t-shirt and sweatpants hang off his thin frame, socks over his feet instead of boots to show the faint outline of his toes, bare hands and scarred, hairy arms with veins, circular scars at the wrist where the HEV suit’s needles dug into his skin to keep him alive. He looked so painfully human under her gaze, messy auburn hair, two little red marks on his nose where his glasses usually sat. This new humanness made her crave touching him again just to see what it would feel like.

So she did. She reached out and carefully squeezed his arm, reassurance, a reminder of her presence. And then he smiled weakly at her, and her world crumbled. Heat tugged at the sides of her cheeks and she swallowed, hard, and looked away, doing her best to mask a grin that wanted so badly to creep onto her face and ruin everything. Despite her visible flushedness she tried to carry on as well as she possibly could with another subtle clearing of her throat. “Are you okay?”

When she looked back at him, his eyes diverted elsewhere, but he quickly nodded. “Then goodnight,” she followed up, deciding to let that smile through. She returned his nod and removed her grip on his arm. As she turned to come back to the comfort of her own warm cot, she felt his hand touch hers and paused in complete shock. It was like lightning.

“Alyx.” There was her name again. She whirled around again to look at his face and once again he looked ashamed, like he regretted saying it. She silently prompted, though, by walking a step back closer to him and returning his grip on her hand. “...Stay with me. Please.”

She stared, a deer in headlights. Surely he couldn’t mean that. He was… he was Gordon Freeman. The One Free Man, the Opener of the Way, savior of humanity and Vortikind. He couldn’t possibly have any feeling towards her that extended past acquaintanceship or perhaps friendship. She had known him her entire life, he had only known her for a week. Alyx knew she was kidding herself to even think that he _perhaps_ felt the same way she did about him, deep admiration, affection, stuttering in her head every time he looked at her or adjusted his glasses or licked his lips in concentration or… or… did just about anything.

She could pretend, though. For tonight, she could pretend that he did. The legend before her (however legendary he exactly looked before her right now) shared her crush. So she said, “Okay.” She hovered for a moment before coming up with the idea to move her cot closer to his instead of up against the opposite wall, pausing for a moment in slight fear as the metal legs of the cot scraped painfully loudly against the cement. She quickly picked it up again and dragged it the rest of the way, leaving six or so inches in between their beds. And then she got in, faced him, and gave him a gentle smile.

“I’m here if you need me.”

He didn’t need to know that she probably wasn’t going to sleep for the rest of the night; not only was she weighed down by all of the guilt and grief that cut away at her stomach, she couldn’t seem to get her heart to stop beating so damn fast. Gordon whispered a very, very quiet _thank you_ to her that made it beat even faster before giving her one more glance of gratitude and closing his eyes to sleep again.

And then Alyx blinked, and it was morning.


	4. Preparations

He never meant to yell. He wasn’t quite sure where it even came from. The courage to speak did not arrive easily—if it did it wouldn’t be courage in the first place. The sudden anger roared from his vocal chords and shocked even him as Alyx stared aghast and sobered. He didn’t mean to, by God he didn’t. He could blame it on stress or fatigue, his brain and body in disharmony, but that would be a cop-out. The fact that, in any state, he would snap like that at a person in grief, and _her_ of all people, chilled him more than the snow outside. 

It cut even deeper the second time. Sure, one could argue that he had a more solid reason to raise his voice this time, with a screaming match already taking place and quickly moving into a dangerous escalation. But it ached. He did not want to make it a habit. 

He used bed in the middle of the afternoon as an excuse to remove himself from the room, though he didn’t truly sleep. The daytime meant that the room which held neatly-rowed cots was empty save for the rebel who stood night watch. He was cautious in his movements entering the room so as not to disturb her. He had worked the night shift at a local gas station as a young adult; he knew the challenges of being nocturnal without having the threat of death hanging over his head, so he imagined she needed rest more than he could even comprehend. 

The cot he chose creaked under him as he lowered himself into it. He chose to simply sit for now. The sterile concrete wall across from him pierced his soul. Cold, unfeeling, and stained from years of ice, slush, then ice again. A perfect canvas for his thoughts which ran with reckless abandon in his head like the molecules of boiling water, darting around with abundant energy. Only he could know why Eli wanted the ship destroyed, and that gnawed at his stomach. _Our mutual friend._

The man draped in business formal haunted him, and up until his short conversation with Vance only days before, he believed it was _only_ him. This was, to his horror, untrue. The influence of this mysterious malefactor reached far beyond his original appraisal, to his old friend and even Alyx. He wondered if she remembered anything other than those words which brought her back to life. Unforeseen consequences. The mere thought of that phrase shot down his spine, and he shuddered. How was he supposed to convince Dr. Mossman to destroy the Borealis if he couldn’t tell her why?

Gordon didn’t go to sleep for some time, but even so, he was tucked away far earlier than anyone else in the outpost. Knowing full well that his struggles would follow him into the morning, he chose to surrender to this inevitability and force himself to sleep. 

 

————

 

When he awoke, a sleeping face was an arm’s length from his. He blinked the night away, sighing himself lucid, and watched. He’d never really seen Alyx sleep before, at least not peacefully. The image of the bloodied table in the mines clung to the recesses of his brain at all times, reminding him that he had certainly seen her unconscious, a low moan escaping on her breath, writhing weakly as her body struggled to comprehend the damage done. She looked comfortable now, which comforted him in turn. A picture of her eyes closed without pain creasing her face. 

His eyes started at the top of her head and worked slowly down. Her hair, for the first time, was loose around her forehead, shorter strands curling around her brow and longer ones touching her jaw. Her usual headband, though absent, had left her with a cowlick around her hairline where it didn’t settle quite right. Her forehead was more relaxed than he had ever seen it, smooth of the wrinkles of trouble. He observed as her closed eyes would twitch and blink every once and a while, indicating to him that despite her peaceful state, the cogs inside her head were still turning as they always did. It made a small smile creep onto his lips.

And as he thought of lips, that’s exactly what he saw. Unpursed in a concentrated thought, not frowning with grief. Neutral. Paused. Understandably chapped, as were his, and lip balm was not exactly on the priority list of things packed in their emergency sacks. Even so, his eyes lingered there. God, she was so beautiful. In the liminal atmosphere of the early morning, he allowed his thoughts to wander where he typically would not: the idea of being with her. Yes, on paper, he barely knew her, and that was something he was fully aware of. It had been just shy of a week since the day she loomed over him, grinning. Despite this he felt he had learned more about her than he knew of any friend he had ever had once upon an apocalypse. He knew that she preferred to flank him from the left rather than right when possible. He knew that she liked her coffee searing hot. He knew she hummed when she was idle, some old song he vaguely remembered but couldn’t quite put his finger on. If he was quiet enough, and concentrated enough, he could even almost hear her heartbeat through the vortessence.

He _knew_ her. Forget timing. And with every hour that passed, the dialogue in his head that led his eyes to her body became increasingly difficult to ignore. He continued to gaze at her sleeping face, and his heart grew louder. The tenderness with which she had regarded him last night as she pulled him from his turbulent dream was enough to melt him even in the frigid weather. Her eyes sparkled so gently in the absence of light, brows turned upward in the middle with concern for him, the special brand of care that comes from someone who knows the torture.

In the window of his imagination he rose from the cot in that dim little room. He stepped closer to her. Her worried eyes drifted to longing, which brought her small, calloused hands to his hips. She tugged at the excess fabric of his shirt and he felt the exposed skin of her neck brush his facial hair as he leaned in to kiss her jaw, draping his own hands around her shoulder blades. As he felt her hot breath on his ear and heard her sigh, he sprang back to reality and rolled quickly onto his back, drawing his eyes away from her, still asleep. _Shame on you._

Gordon knew he couldn’t. Inappropriate was a word that wouldn’t begin to describe just how perfectly wrong it would be to pursue her in that manner, and he was ashamed for even letting himself entertain the idea of it. To begin, they were in grave danger, mere miles from one of the biggest Combine operations they’d seen besides the late Citadel, not even mentioning the fact that she spiraled further into grief every day that they spent away from White Forest. She was dying on the inside without her father to guide her. Alyx wandered aimlessly through this experience, and he was fairly sure that wandering wasn’t something she’d ever done in any capacity judging by how calculated each of her movements had been until the hangar.

A professional relationship. Comrades. Friends. But that was _it._ Anything else would be irresponsible. So, he swallowed his desire and ripped the covers from his legs, ignoring the impulse to give her face one last glance as he exited the room in his borrowed pajamas.

The soles of his slippers clopped across the concrete as he trudged to the common area of the bunker. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead just as they had yesterday, and if the clock on the kitchen counter hadn’t read 0522 he wouldn’t have a clue what time it was or if he had slept through the night at all. It wasn’t as though he was inexperienced with a distinctive lack of sunlight. His year or so at Black Mesa trained him to stay awake despite the constant whine of artificial light, invading his head like the static on a television. Unpleasant but familiar, uncomfortable and yet comforting. He stood at the clock and closed his eyes, breathing in the filtered air and watching the negatives of residual light dance on the inside of his eyelids. For a moment, he sunk back into his desk chair. A chunky office keyboard clacked across the room at another cubicle. Somewhere, a phone rang, and if he really thought, he could smell the bitter scent of instant coffee wafting through as everyone struggled to come to full energy.

“Ah, the Freeman is awake.”

On edge, his eyes flew open and he whipped around to face the voice, clutching the linoleum counter behind him. He had no idea there was a vortigaunt stationed here, nor that anyone at all was awake, though he quickly remembered that vorts didn’t really sleep. 

“Sincerest apologies,” the alien continued, holding out their three-fingered hands. “I meant no harm.”

“No… no, it’s okay,” Gordon replied quietly, sucking in a deep breath to calm his startled heart. “I just didn’t realize anyone was up but me.”

The vortigaunt paused for a moment as if they were thinking. The eye dominating their face blinked in realization, and they looked back up at him. “Caffeine. This must be prepared.”

_They have coffee, thank God._ “I can do that,” he said as the Vort crossed through the kitchen, he assumed to find the coffee pot.

They waved a hand dismissively. “It is no trouble, Freeman.” 

“Well… alright…” he trailed off. “Do you have, uh, a name or something?”

“The humans have a preference for calling this one Corinth.”

“Corinth,” Gordon repeated. “That’s interesting.”

He stood, awkwardly he would admit, leaning against the counter as Corinth followed the steps necessary to let the coffee brew. Once the plug met the outlet on the wall, the coffee maker came to life and began to make a characteristic growling noise as its inner mechanics went to work heating the coffee. The vortigaunt used a towel by the sink to wipe their hands of grounds and nodded cordially at Gordon before turning to disappear into the nook of the room from which they had appeared.

“W- wait,” he called out, and Corinth stopped, blinking at him.

“What does the Freeman require?”

Eli weighed on his mind, and so did the cold, unnatural eyes of the man in the suit. He would never have the chance to have that conversation with him about that man and his influence on the old scientist, and that shook him. The sudden outburst towards the vortigaunt was due to the memory of the collapsing Citadel at the moment of impact; the man’s attempt to pluck him from reality once again and his failure at the hands of the vortessence.

He hesitated before gesturing to the table. “Sit, please.” Only when they had both taken chairs and settled in did he continue. “I wanted to… discuss something with you. I have questions about something.”

“Questions are welcome to be asked,” the vortigaunt responded.

“I’m not very educated on the vortessence, but from what I understand it’s like… a network, is that right?”

Corinth thought for a moment. “This is a simplification, but it is adequate for your comprehension. Indeed, we communicate over a network of sorts.”

“So that means that you know everything that happens amongst all of your... kind.”

“We are one manifested in many bodies,” they clarified, nodding slowly. “One of us cannot feel or think disconnected from another.”

“That’s what I thought.” Gordon took a few seconds to properly articulate the words that would come out of his mouth next. “The… hmm. When… when Wallace Breen died. You took me and Alyx Vance and you moved us out of ground zero. But the only way you could take me was… was by stopping… him.” The alien’s expression shifted. “You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?”

“This man the Freeman speaks of has no name to us, but we know him. This man is… of great influence.”

He wasn’t sure what answer he was looking for, but the one he was given made him sick to his stomach. “Will you tell me about him?”

“There are things that should not be repeated outside of the vortessence.”

“ _Please._ I think he’s the only reason why I’m alive. I don’t understand, and I want to.”

Corinth looked down, away from him. “One could call the man a catalyst. Molding the universe to prepare for the events that brought our worlds together. We suspect he has motives beyond the destruction of this rock.”

“Borealis,” Gordon interjected.

“Borealis. Perhaps,” they replied. “Aperture Science created a device beyond any technology at the disposal of the Combine or any force we have encountered. Borealis… is powerful. A change of possession after it materializes could prove catastrophic.”

Gordon’s fingertips tapped on the wood. “Why do you think he wants it so badly? I understand it’s important, but important enough to create a resonance cascade? Don’t you think--”

As he delved deeper into questioning with the vortigaunt, he heard the door of the bedroom swing open and tired footsteps trudge out. His head turned to see Judith. It was best to continue this conversation another time, he decided with a glance at his new alien counterpart. 

“Dr. Freeman,” she began, sleep still heavy on her vocal cords. “I’d like to formally apologize for yesterday. Tensions… well, I could tell you that tensions are high, but that’s something I’m certain you’re fully aware of.”

“It’s okay, Doctor.” He nodded with empathy. “I understand. How are you?”

She looked quite taken aback with his question, and he saw her throat tense with a nervous swallow. Her eyes appeared as though she was fighting tears. “I’m sure you already know that too.”

He gazed down at the table again, hands linked together. “I do. I’m very sorry that you had to be the last to find out.”

The only reply he received was the sound of a mug being lifted from its place on a shelf and having hot coffee poured into it immediately after. The machine must have produced just enough for a partial cup in the time he had been in his discussion with Corinth. He bit the inside of his cheek at the idea of continuing that conversation. He needed more information. He was a _scientist;_ without sufficient data, where was he supposed to be going? That was a deep-set fear for a man of science--not knowing something.

“Corinth,” Mossman chimed after several drawling moments of silence. “Would you mind giving us the room?”

“This one will venture to the garage and continue work on the Combine vehicle.”

“Thank you.”

With a nod of their head they turned heel and left through a door that led to the garage, after which Gordon’s attention immediately moved back to Judith. He waved her over to the table, but she remained in her position. Understanding, he surrendered and let her stand.

“I know that Alyx wants the ship destroyed, and you as well. I just don’t grasp why, nor do I understand why Eli would want the same.” Her mug clanked quietly down on the countertop. “If the Resistance were to gain control over Borealis it would change everything. Why would we work to seize it just to see it gone?”

He was desperate to help her understand. The constant exchange of animosity between Mossman and Alyx was clearly taking a toll on each of them and himself. If he could find the right words to articulate an explanation that might satisfy her justifiable curiosity on the subject, maybe she would find it easier to follow Eli’s wishes. He got her reasoning, he truly did; if it weren’t for the conversation he had had with the man mere minutes before his demise, he would find himself on that side of the table, too. But his friend’s words haunted him. He was truly sorry to both Dr. Mossman and Dr. Kleiner, but they did not know the things happening that he and Eli knew. They didn’t know about _him._

“I don’t know,” he lied right through his teeth. “I honestly don’t. But he and Dr. Kleiner got into a massive argument about it when they’d finished decoding your transmission. Kleiner wanted to take control of it like you do, and Eli wanted it gone. He was afraid of another incident like Black Mesa.”

“Oh, Eli…” There was so much grief on her voice as she breathed out his name, sinking to lean more of her weight on the counter. “He’s always regretted everything so much, almost to a point of paralysis. I wish he wouldn’t let it consume him like that.” Her sad, gray eyes turned to meet Gordon’s. “I’ve tried so hard to convince him that it isn’t going to happen again, that Black Mesa is well behind us. But he won’t listen to reason. He… _wouldn’t_ listen to reason.”

“I think he was most concerned about the risk of it surviving and landing in the wrong hands.” _Such as the man’s._ “Such as the Combine’s.”

“I know, I can comprehend him feeling that way. It’s a valid concern. But I see the potential gain and I think, why would we ever destroy something that could bring us forward… thirty years in teleportation technology.”

“Using the borderworld is a major security risk,” he pointed out.

Judith quickly shook her head. “There’s a possibility that the tech that lies on Borealis doesn’t take into account the borderworld at all.”

“... _What?_ Really?”

“We have no evidence to suggest that the scientists working at Aperture Labs had any idea of the existence of Xen. And if they were privy to that discovery, they certainly didn’t make use of it in the way that Black Mesa did. It would be reasonable to assume that they figured out an entirely different way to teleport, and again taking into account the nature of Aperture’s work, that would explain how unstable the ship is.”

Gordon was dumbfounded. The past week of playing catch-up had granted him explanations of the way the teleports worked, how they used Xen as a sort of slingshot to swing matter from point A to point B. He was beginning to grasp these concepts as his mind recalled the sensations and properties of the strange spheres of light he had used to ping pong through the alien planet. This, though? This was too much.

“That is incredible,” he couldn’t help but utter as he tried to absorb the reality of what he was hearing. The Resistance _would_ benefit from that kind of tech. If they were able to get access to the device, they could adjust it to stability and then engineer the most efficient and direct teleporters they had ever seen. It would change everything. But his brow darkened anyway as he looked down at his hands. “We still need to destroy it. The benefit of the Resistance gaining that knowledge doesn’t outweigh the risk of the Combine getting it instead.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Judith meandered around the small kitchen, finding her way to the chair next to his as she held her mug close to her body. “And, with all due respect, I wish you hadn’t.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.”

She nodded, eyes fixed on the black surface of her drink. “Eli may have been right. Now that he’s…” She trailed off to regain a firm grip on her composure. “The Combine has all of his expertise now. They know the entire structure of the Resistance top to bottom, our projects, our defenses. If they were to gain even more of an advantage over us… We don’t have the manpower for a One Hour War, much less another Seven. It would be a battle we’d doomed to lose from the start.”

The door to the room where other rebels had been sleeping opened once again to reveal two more people just waking up. After them followed a bleary-eyed Alyx. Gordon couldn’t stand to meet her gaze, instead opting to get up and pour himself a cup of coffee. He paid attention out of the corner of his eye as she watched Judith and then swiftly diverted to the others.

“Do you guys have any powdered eggs?” she asked one of them.

“Yeah, up there,” he responded, gesturing to one of the overhead cabinets.

“Ah. Thanks, Bradley.” _Bradley._ He’d have to try and remember that one.

He focused even more on his coffee as she walked by with the bag. “It’s nice to eat something that’s not an MRE,” Alyx continued. “Hey, save some for the rest of us, Gordon.”

“What?” He looked up at her and she gestured towards the pot. It was empty now, new liquid brewing, every drop sizzling on the bare floor of the glass. “Oh. Sorry.”

“I’m just kidding,” she replied with a hint of concern. “You good?”

He turned his attention back to his drink in an effort to lock away his thoughts from the early morning. “Yeah.”

Her forehead wrinkled as she processed his answer, but she eventually nodded and continued her mission to cook breakfast. “ _Please_ tell me you’ve got salt and pepper.”

The other rebel spoke. “We packed up in a pretty good hurry, Miss Vance. We could only grab so much.”

“Damn,” she sighed. “Guess we’re having sad eggs this morning.”

Suddenly, the atmosphere of the base that he would have previously called “cozy” became much too small. A rising feeling in his chest cried for space away from the others to think, to calculate what the vortigaunt had said, to make a plan. His body reacted before his brain and carried him to the bathroom tucked away into the corner of the bunker.

A single light flickered over the mirror. It was a dingy room, to put it politely, showing the same level of aging that White Forest did. Depressing, but luckily still clean. He locked the door behind him and sighed. The latrine stood out to him as a reasonable place to sit down, so he did just that, not before lowering the lid. His glasses came off and folded easily to rest on the lip of the sink. His hair felt vile as his fingers threaded through to clutch his scalp, the sensation of caked dirt shot him for a moment back to Black Mesa, where the blood of others and himself coated the brunette strands. He felt like ripping these clothes off and leaping into the shower, but by now the aging pipes of this forgotten station would moan and creak with the effort of pumping in gallons of water, and he would be even less likely to be greeted with anything other than frigid ice raining over him from the faucet.

The plumbing of White Forest, maintained much better, would prove satisfactory for a shower once they arrived home. If they arrived home. He supposed it would be a reward.

He removed his fingers from his oily hair and rubbed them on the legs of his pants to rid himself of the feeling.The grime would have to take a backseat in his mind for now. Every hour that passed gave the Combine more time for reparations after their break-in and subsequent breakout yesterday, which meant they needed to make a plan as soon as possible to infiltrate the compound once again. Judith and her team hopefully had the information necessary to make reentry as smooth as it could be given the circumstances, and he also prayed that they had enough intel regarding the ship itself to grant them a leg up on boarding it.

Gordon sighed again, longer and thinner this time. His head came to lean back against the wall, his back resting on the tank of the toilet. Laid out before him, the steps to completing their mission seemed extremely simple. Get in, use some large force of energy to neutralize the ship, and leave. He knew it wasn’t that easy. Ice-blue eyes flashed across his own. The cold grimace of his employer reminded him that he was powerless to breach his contract. Getting rid of Borealis while he was looming over him would be incredibly difficult, if not completely impossible. The vortigaunts might know how to fend him off. Temporarily.

His stomach lurched. The only options he had were to obey the man for self-preservation, or to defy him and face the punishment. Death was one thing, and he had risked his life a hundred times before, but there was no indication in that nauseating glare of his that death was the worst case scenario.

A knock on the door jolted him from his mental whirlwind. “Hey, are you gonna be long in there?” asked the voice of one of the female rebels whose name he hadn’t caught yet. “I really gotta go.”

“Uh-- no,” he responded as he rose from the latrine and flushed it to mask the fact that he had been sitting aimlessly. He threw his hands under the cold water of the faucet for good measure before opening the door to the woman. “Sorry.”

“No problem. ‘Preciate it,” she replied as she traded places with him.

“...so we had the ATV so stuck and didn’t have the gravity gun with us, and Barney and I ended up having to pull the damn thing out of the mud ourselves.” Alyx’s voice slowly filled his ears as he rounded the corner into the kitchen. She was clutching a bowl of scrambled instant eggs close to her chest while she told a story to the rest of the rebels who were gathered around her. She seemed vibrant as ever. Gordon wasn’t sure how she did that--pretending to be okay when she wasn’t. Perhaps growing up in the apocalypse forced you to be that way to survive, he decided. “By the time we got it back on the road we were absolutely _covered_ in mud.”

The team chatting around her laughed at the image, and as Bradley piped up to add something else, Alyx’s eyes caught his own. She went from decently jovial to troubled in an instant, eyeing him up and down as if he had jogged her memory of something. Was he a reminder to her?

“Have you heard anything from Barney, Dr. Mossman?” he turned to ask her after Bradley.

She frowned at her coffee. “I’m afraid I haven’t. But Calhoun has always been capable and incredibly stubborn. I don’t doubt we’ll be hearing him as soon as he’s able to reach us.”

“He got over the bridge before we did,” Alyx chimed in. “As long as there were no other collapses ahead of us… he and the other refugees should be fine. They’re most likely moving in a pack to White Forest.”

Judith nodded. “Or they could have already arrived. With everything that’s happened in the area, radio communication is an absolute nightmare. Towers most likely went down in the portal storms.”

They were both right. He didn’t need anything more to worry about, so he forced himself to swallow their explanations for his silence and accept them until he could find otherwise. After a deep breath, he nodded and reached for his mug once again.

“Listen,” Daniel said hesitantly. “I don’t mean to break up the party, but I feel like now that most of us are awake we need to consider our next moves.”

“No, you’re right,” another added. “The longer it takes us to get back to the Combine facility, the lower the chance of finding Allison and Curtis alive.”

_Allison and Curtis?_ ”Gemma… I’m so sorry,” Judith murmured with grief. “I didn’t tell you. They’re dead.”

Judith’s recon team--the ones she mentioned in the interrogation room with a heavy breath. Gordon tried not to learn their names sometimes. He never meant to be rude, but most of the people that he came in contact with were fleeting. It was a miracle if he knew them for a few days or weeks, and par for the course to watch them die mere hours after meeting their eyes for the first time.

A blanket of melancholy fell on the team, and it went silent. “Oh, god…” whispered Gemma, who sunk all of her weight into the kitchen counter and put her hand over her mouth.

His gaze focused back on Alyx and he saw her eyes flash with pain as she stared at no place in particular. Her voice was gravelly and dark when she spoke. “We’ve lost too many good people.”

“No shit,” Bradley huffed. “Dammit. Allie’s husband was at New Little Odessa last time I heard anything from him.”

“I doubt he’s alive, either,” muttered Daniel, rubbing his temples.

Another period of quiet filled the room, suffocating them like cotton. The atmosphere lay heavy on their shoulders as they mutually re-experienced the losses of the war. There would be more. An unavoidable consequence.

“They gave up their lives to get us access to that fortress of theirs,” Alyx finally stated, firm enough to cut the grief and tension surrounding them. “We can’t afford to hurt for them right now. We have to use it as fuel for the fire. Would they want us to stand here under two feet of snow, crying over their bodies? No. They would want us to _rise._ ”

Gemma’s face darkened. “How can you say that? You just lost your father, for Chrissake.”

“I don’t have room.” A dry, smileless laugh exited her mouth. “I’m full up on missing people. I can’t.”

The room seemed to nod unanimously. “Well,” Judith spoke first, “then let’s get to work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you surprised? Trust me, I am too. I fully expected to never come back to this fic. But here we are! I had to get some exposition out of the way, but next chapter should be more action-y, so you can look forward to that if you're into kickin' Combine ass. Thanks for your patience!


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